Executive Aggrandizement and Democratic Resilience

• In Event: The Roots of Resilience: Democratic Durability, Renovation and Redemocratization

Abstract

When democracies experience an existential threat from within, how do they avoid democratic breakdown? This article addresses five democracies that showed resilience in the face of incumbent-led autocratization. To understand why these cases survived, we pair them with a similar case where incumbents successfully dismantled democracy from within. Through structured focused comparisons, our inductive exercise provides new insights into democratic resilience and breakdown. Where democracy survived, anti-democratic incumbents came from centrist parties and made critical errors, including major policy blunders and miscalculations, ultimately costing them their positions and allowing democracy to rebound. Thus, civil society actors, the media, and judiciaries are vital sources of democratic resilience. By contrast, democracies appear particularly fragile when ethnopopulist leaders obtain a large majority in the legislature, enabling them to overcome checks and balances and thwart major opposition movements from below.

Authors

• Christopher Akor, The University of Alabama

• Myles Williamson, University of Baltimore

• Amanda B. Edgell, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa